I thought I would open a discussion of the Powell and Pressburger films and British film in general, if anyone wishes to broaden the discussion. I also wanted to follow up on Mark’s perceptive comments in the previous post on 49th Parallel being “intended as WWII propaganda to help coax the US into the war, illustrating just what total bastards the Nazis are and how you can't ignore them...”
I was going to write about the significance of WWII in these films but it started to get endless so I gave up. I thought it was interesting that in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), there was a sympathetic German character, so there was an effort to avoid portraying the German people as evil en masse. The liberation of the death camps in 1945 meant that any future film made about the war would have to acknowledge that incredible evil. But to make it even more complex, as soon as we learned about the Holocaust, the Germans themselves could not be portrayed as completely evil because we needed West Germany as our ally in the looming Cold War against the USSR. So we again had to be more nuanced and separate Germans from Nazis.
BTW, if anyone is interested in a French twist on this, take a look at the novel Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky. It covers the German invasion of France in 1940 and the first year of the occupation. The story behind this novel is quite incredible. I recommend reading the novel before reading the intro or any biographical info. A film is coming out this year.
This is list of 1940’s P & P films:
Contraband (1940)
49th Parallel (1941)
The Volunteer (1943)
A Canterbury Tale (1944)
A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
Black Narcissus (1947)
The Red Shoes (1948)
The Small Back Room (1949)
I've seen these - 49th Parallel (1941) The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) A Matter of Life and Death (1946) Black Narcissus (1947) The Small Back Room (1949) --All but Black Narcissus are about the war on some level.
I have A Canterbury Tale (1944) and The Red Shoes (1948) on hold at the library so it shouldn't be more than a week or so before I’m able to talk about them.
Here’s some comments on I Know Where I’m Going from Wiki.
"I've never seen a picture which smelled of the wind and rain in quite this way nor one which so beautifully exploited the kind of scenery people actually live with, rather than the kind which is commercialized as a show place." – Raymond Chandler
"The cast makes the best possible use of some natural, unforced dialogue, and there is some glorious outdoor photography." – The Times, 14 November 1945
"I reached the point of thinking there were no more masterpieces to discover, until I saw I Know Where I'm Going!" – Martin Scorsese
The film critic Barry Norman included it among his 100 greatest films of all time.
I have to add that, in 49th Parallel, the Nazis scuttling across Canada - their Uboat having been sunk, the survivors are making for Vancouver to try & return to the Fatherland by way of a Japanese ship - at one point turn up at a Hutterite farm, mostly composed of Germans who left Europe in rejection of fascism for the freedom of life in North America. And there is a passionate speech by the nominal head of the farming cooperative about the difference between most Germans and those power-mad Germans who fell under Hitler's sway. So the point is made, very forcibly, that the Nazis are sui generis, outliers that shouldn't be confused with the entire German people.
ReplyDeleteThis is such an interesting movie that makes time for nuance and also for some startling scenes of violence (the Eskimo village in particular is horrifying) and pretty raw talk about sub-human races, sections of the film that were edited out for the US release. The US was not yet in the war yet when the movie was filmed and released, and the German government still held some sway in Hollywood, advising cuts of such scenes that might be true to Nazi doctrine and ruthlessness but were a little too pungent and "real." Studio chiefs usually accommodated them to avoid any problems with their films being screened in Europe. In this case, the whole movie would be pretty objectionable to the German government, so I bet these cuts were made by American censors just because these scenes were too much for general happy-go-lucky American moviegoers! An interesting book on this topic came out last year from Harvard University Press: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674724747
Mark, your comments made want to take another look at 49th Parallel. I feel they were spot on. I really didn’t remember much from a decades old TV viewing other than Olivier in a flannel shirt. I sure as heck didn’t remember Eric Portman’s great performance as Lt Hirth. It reminded me of Ralph Fiennes Schindler's List performance. As the Mountie said, “he has a commanding manner and carries himself as if he's been drilled.” I doubt there had been any popular film before this one that gave so clear an exposure of Nazi racial ideas.
ReplyDeleteYou summed film up as well as anyone could, but here’s a few observation. Hirth was pretty foolish to give that pro-Hitler speech at the Hutterite camp without really knowing much about them. There are many evocative moments. Vogel’s (the German u boat crew member who would rather be a baker) expression of shame when the Hutterite girl Anna looks at him during Hirth’s speech. Also, despite being a ruthless follower of an insane ideology, Hirth was given a real personality. I like the way he tried to convert the trapper Johnnie, not unlike a religious proselytizer. His calm faith in presenting his copy of Mein Kampf , “This IS the Bible. You must get a copy. It will explain everything to you as it has to me.” I also had to laugh when he shows a road map to the two remaining crew members and says with a smirk, “He gave me this.These Canadians give everything away.” (I remember when gas stations used to give away free road maps) Although it appears that the stereotyping is a little thick, I liked the clever use of Canada’s diverse ethnic groups, and the independent and anti-authoritarian personalities played by the three leads, Olivier, Leslie Howard, and Raymond Massey. Yes, it was very entertaining propaganda used to buck up the Canadians and to get the US into the war at a crucial point in world history. Great fun for us, but I can’t help thinking what a desperate moment it was for Britain. At that point, not too many observers thought they had much of a chance.